Forget Follower Count: What Actually Drives Sales, According to a TikTok Marketing Expert If you're starting off the year with a bunch of execs demanding explosive growth in 2026, you'll like this creator's refreshing take: "Your brand doesn't need to be loved by everyone. Even if you've captured just 3% of the market, your brand can stay alive."  While I'm aware "staying alive" is more disco anthem than marketing goal, her point holds: Trying to appeal to everyone in 2026 isn't going to work… and it also doesn't need to. Crafting strong marketing that resonates with a loyal group of enthusiasts is better than Hail Marying your brand on a billboard in Times Square.  Jemma Wu Integrated Marketing & Partnerships Strategist Fun fact: Joined the founding team of the instant beauty brand Never Have I Ever with a group of friends from the creative industry. In just two years, fully bootstrapped and built from scratch, they scaled the brand into retailers like Urban Outfitters, PacSun, and World Market, while reaching $1.5M in total DTC and wholesale sales. Claim to fame: Helped brands including The Ordinary, CeraVe, TikTok Shop, and Crocs achieve an average 51% sales increase within six months through authentic audience connection and fully integrated marketing campaigns. Lesson 1: Great marketing lives at the intersection of seeing the forest and examining the trees. Wu approaches TikTok videos and fashion through the same lens.  "Coming from a designer background back in...

What should marketers let go of in 2026? I asked six HubSpot colleagues who are experts in their respective arena what their hopes and dreams are for 2026. From “just make AI and spreadsheets work” to tracking emotional momentum, here‘s what we’re looking forward to next year. You can also check out the hard-won lessons my colleagues learned from the rollercoaster that was 2025. What is the one thing you are betting AI will finally be able to do for you in 2026 that it cannot quite nail today? Adam Biddlecombe, Lead marketer, AI media strategist “Honestly, I am just praying for seamless integration with Sheets. I have lost too many hours this year going back and forth with ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini trying to build or analyze a spreadsheet, and it still never quite lands. “I want that moment where I can point at a messy sheet and say, ‘Clean this up, fix the formulas, and show me the insights,’ and it just does it. No weird formatting and no hallucinating. If AI can genuinely understand and manipulate Sheets the way an analyst would, that is the upgrade I am most excited for in 2026.” Rory Hope, Senior manager, EN Growth “I hope that we’ll see more AI reporting solutions from analytics platforms in 2026. If we can get to the point where reporting becomes as easy as entering prompts asking for performance insights that take into context your objectives, goals, and priorities (possibly via MCP),...

"AI is bad at being cool" I spent the last week asking HubSpot marketers to get really honest about what actually worked for them in 2025 — and what they let go of. Six HubSpotters share some of their “why didn’t I do this sooner?” moments from the past 12 months, from rethinking how they use AI to backing unmeasurable bets. If you could go back to January 2025, what would you tell yourself to stop overthinking? Adam Biddlecombe, Lead marketer, AI media strategist “Stop overthinking AI. It is exciting, easily the biggest technological shift of my lifetime, but so many use cases are still experimental and not consistently accurate. “The real wins have come from keeping it simple. Small tasks, small workflow tweaks. Building a handful of custom GPTs for specific jobs, getting meeting notes summarized for a quick Slack update, turning messy ideas into a clear campaign brief. “Those little building blocks have made me way more productive, organized, and efficient at work.” Rory Hope, Senior manager, EN Growth “I would have told myself not to overthink how AI is disrupting top of funnel search marketing, and that’s because we’ve seen this year how the search community has evolved to focus on optimizing for AI visibility. We’ve now got AI visibility monitoring tools, proven AEO tactics, and clear AEO reporting KPIs. “In January 2025, the route forwards was uncertain, but we’ve thankfully been able to navigate that uncertainty and establish a new AEO process that’s...

2025's Lingering Questions Lingering Questions is one of my favorite parts of the Masters in Marketing newsletter, because it’s an opportunity for marketers to talk directly to one another. This year, a few clear themes emerged: yes, AI can help you be a better and more efficient marketer, but human connection is more important than ever; authenticity, even if it means you’re a bit unpolished, is preferable to perfection; and consumers across all industries are hungry for community. We’ve rounded up all the questions marketers asked each other in the last 12 months: April Sunshine Hawkins, Marketing and communications leader “What warm memory comes to mind when you hear these three words: creative, curious, courageous?” Irina Novoselsky, CEO of Hootsuite "I've spent the last year focused on building meaningful relationships on LinkedIn — sharing personal and professional experiences to create genuine connections. Each of these words have shaped this journey: staying curious about what my audience cares about and wants to learn from me, experimenting with creative ways to share my experience and engage with others, and embracing the courage it took to get started and be vulnerable. "As the CEO of a social company, I recognize the transformative power of social media. It drives pipeline, builds connections, and ensures your voice shapes conversations that are happening with or without you. But what's even more powerful is the impact the relationships built through social can have outside of the digital world. "A memory that stands out...

Circus dreams and serious struggles: Lessons on leadership from a literal ringmaster Lights dim. Sounds hush. The aerialist spins into the air. Sequins sparkle in the warm light of a followspot, and my weird little brain wonders: “What does marketing look like for a travelling circus where every other week brings a totally new market?” When I went searching for the answer, I found, instead, one of the most genuinely profound and heartfelt conversations I’ve had in a long time. And the reinforcement of my belief that, sometimes, the most important lessons for marketers… don’t come from marketers at all. Kevin Venardos Owner/Founder/Ringmaster of Venardos Circus Fun fact: I’m sorry, what could be a more fun fact than that he owns his own circus?! Claim to fame: Kevin grew his circus from a rented tent at a state fair to two touring shows delighting 45 locations across the U.S. and over 200,000 attendees!   Lesson 1: Use your dream to help others achieve theirs. “All I owned was a significant amount of debt,” Venardos says, recounting the birth of his circus. “It started with a desire to keep working. To not have to rely on someone else thinking I was useful to keep around.” But life had a lesson in store that would change his very motivation. “I found this little in Snohomish, WA. And I said, ‘Hey, let me put my little circus by your event, and...

How The Doux uses AI to engage community “I think we're moving into a space where most beauty companies are tech companies,” says Maya Smith. It’s a striking claim from a brand that launched in 2012, long before AI was everywhere. But The Doux has always been ahead of the curve. Since day one, the haircare brand has been anchored in culture: hip-hop references, retro- and Afrofuturism, Black hair-salon nostalgia, all in service of marketing hair products to Black women. For all AI can do, Smith, who’s The Doux's co-founder, CEO, and creative director, is well aware that system biases are still rampant; the tech is accelerating faster than access and representation. “What I understood is that in order for that to change, you really have to start to train AI,” Smith tells me. “I wanted to be a part of .” Here’s how she’s doing exactly that. Partnering with Black Girls Code Collaborating with Black Girls Code (BGC), The Doux launched the Black Beauty AI Challenge back in June, calling on budding creators to submit their original AI-generated videos. Other than the requirement to use only free tools like Canva, Capcut, or Pika — “because a lot of the obstacles are to do with access” — participants were given intentionally broad parameters to showcase how they define Black beauty, for a chance to earn cash prizes and additional visibility opportunities. Winners will be announced later this month. “I understand that there‘s some apprehension, because a lot of...

3 bitter truths all marketers need to hear right now When I saw a LinkedIn post from today’s master declaring, “Marketing’s job is not to drive revenue,” I did a little shimmy and thought, “She gets it!” We struck up a conversation, and I discovered an entire pharmacopeia of tough pills to swallow. “I love talking smack about marketing!” she grinned. I asked for three of the bitterest truths that marketers need to hear. And, folks… it’s time to take your medicine. Moni Oloyede Founder, Educator at MO MarTech Fun fact: Moni hails from the same town as Edward Norton, Aaron McGruder, Christian Siriano, and Druski. (Do you know it without googling?)   Lesson 1: Marketing’s job is not to drive revenue. Every CMO in the audience just reflexively jerked towards the “unsubscribe” button. Stick with us here. “The problem with being focused on revenue is that your marketing feels like you’re just throwing spaghetti at the wall,” says Oloyede. “You just chase leads all day. ‘They didn’t click my email, let me move on to the next topic, and see if that works. And you jump and jump and jump.’” She points out that the instant gratification within digital marketing has raised a generation of marketers who have never been given the fundamentals. Which works until it doesn’t. “I was raised in the digital marketing space. I didn’t know a time before that. And when I went to grad school, I realized:...

Use the Ick to Create Better Marketing Our expert this week has a few hot takes.  Here's one: "Any marketer that says they've never felt the ick from marketing isn't a true marketer. You do feel the ick." While that doesn't sound like the best lesson to open a marketing newsletter, stay with me. I swear this isn't a I'm-quitting-my-job-to-work-on-a-goat-farm hail mary.  It actually has more to do with foundational marketing than you think.  Meet the Master Cristina Jerome Creative Strategist and Founder, Off Worque Claim to fame: Leading social for Topical's infamous Faded Eye mask campaign. Fun fact: She was the voiceover for the Topical's brand campaign video. Lesson one: Feel the ick. And use it to create better marketing.  Cristina Jerome has had a whole host of jobs most marketers would kill for.  She's worked on content and social strategy for Jada Pinkett Smith's show Red Table Talk, plus Issa Rae's Rap Sh!t on HBOMax. She directed social content at Topicals, Sephora's fastest growing Black-owned skincare brand.  She's also dabbled in marketing for Adidas and Lobos 1707, a luxury tequila brand.  And, most recently, she launched her own non-profit social club, Off Worque, which emphasizes mental health and work-life balance. Phew. I'm exhausted just typing that up.  So my first question to Jerome was an easy one: How did building her own brand shift her approach to marketing? "It didn't change logically," she told me. "It changed spiritually. When you're working for...

Forget B2B or B2C: It’s time for B2H This pains me greatly to say, but: That typo in your last campaign may have made your audience more engaged. That’s because in a world where you don’t always know what’s real and what’s AI — and trust in general is in rapid decline — a little tyop indicates that a real human wrote it (see what I did there?). “We’ve been taught to think about B2B or B2C,” says today’s marketing master, “but I’m actually interested in B2H — there’s a human on the other side.” Meet the Master Bryetta Calloway Founder and CEO, Stories Seen Claim to fame: Calloway isn’t anti-AI by any means — her company has just produced the MVP of IDA, an AI tool that helps people tell their stories within systems that may have been built without them in mind. “AI is a really great tool to scale your strategy,” she says. “Not replace it.” Lesson 1: Emotion + Logic = Engagement. “I always say to start with emotional resonance,” Calloway tells me. “Literally, if you’re building a four-sentence story, start with emotion.” To find that point of connection, ask yourself: “What did you feel? What did you see? What did you hear?” And don’t underestimate humor — “if you can get your audience to laugh, you have already bypassed the part of the brain that‘s like, ‘I don’t trust this.’” Now you want to support that emotion with something...

"You need to be an event business" “It's not enough to be a hospitality business anymore,” small-business owner Shelley Pippin says. “You need to be an event business.” Here’s why Brewnuts has been so successful at using events to carve out a niche for themselves, and what small- and medium-sized business marketers can learn from “Ohio’s first and only doughnut bar,” regardless of your industry. Meet the Master Shelley Pippin Founder and co-owner, Brewnuts When you think of bar food, you probably think of things like burgers and sandwiches. But Cleveland-based Brewnuts has a different vision: As Brewnuts’ “Ohio's first and only doughnut bar,” as co-owner and founder Shelley Pippin puts it, the business pairs a carefully curated selection of beer and coffee drinks with a rotating selection of homemade doughnuts. For Brewnuts, their menu is just the (sweet) start, however. “It's not enough to be a hospitality business anymore,” Pippin says. “You need to be an event business.” In addition to a menu of brews and dones, Brewnuts books weekends celebrating holidays (Halloween), pop culture (Twilight) and fandom lore (an annual December toast to Taylor Swift’s birthday called “Taylor Fest”). These special events often come with unique coffee drinks or theme-specific doughnuts; for example, a “Boston Scream!” for spooky season. Photo credit: Emily Drapp “I love creating things, and I see my job as being responsible for surprising and delighting people,” Pippin says. “That's why I love the hospitality industry. It’s a place where you...